the lateness of the hour
by PreludeInZ
Summary: Tunnels of Time happened and I wound up with a ship. I ship this ship. I think they are ADORABLE. Consider this a prequel to The Venetian Venture


Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward sleeps in a bed worth over sixty-thousand US dollars. This is just shy of forty-thousand Great British Pounds. It's sixteenth century, Jacobean, solid oak and weighs as much as a small car. It's massive, darkly-stained wood, and four postered. The panel in the back would extend nearly to the ceiling, if the ceilings in Lady Penelope's bedroom weren't vaulted. The word ornate fails to fully summarize the sheer detail and grandeur of the carvings that cover the nine-paneled tester. These depict figures and foliage, intricate and twisting geometry, and must have taken a master craftsman years to complete, so many centuries ago.

It doesn't suit Lady Penelope's personality, her delicacy and her elegance, her refined and modern tastes. The bedding itself is of the best quality available, naturally. The sheets are cool, soft egyptian cotton, the duvet is plush and thick with goose down. Her pillows are richly soft, her pajamas are pale pink, silk, and tasteful. Everything besides the frame of the bed itself is beautiful.

In a word, the bed is ugly. In two, it is hideously so. But, it's been Penelope's bed since childhood, and it's been in the family since the master craftsman was first employed to carve it. And its weight and its darkness have always meant security, all the faces and shapes and figures have always been familiar, comforting. Lady Penelope has slept beneath the stars in the Serengeti, with warm African wind teasing at the frame of her tent. She's slept beneath the midnight sun in Antarctica at the bottom of the world, and been colder than she knew was possible. Lady Penelope is a woman who adores, above all else, the comforts of home. And there's nowhere in the world she sleeps better than in her own bed.

In the safest place in her world-in the entire world, quite probably, and she's seen enough of it to know-she's woken, heart-pounding and gasping for breath, from nightmares. For the past week.

It's always too hot. She's always thrown her blankets off, remembering the steamy heat of the South American jungle. Even in the depths of the temple, the heat had still reached them. There'd been passages that were cool and dry, but Lady Penelope can't seem to shake the memory of the heat, and the way her skin was damp with it. She's been in far hotter places, of course, but the memory of this heat seems to have made its way inside her.

Perhaps it's being muddled up with the heat that had flushed through her, embarassment for her own abstraction, when Gordon Tracy had caught her around the waist and flung her painfully to the ground, while spears had thudded into the walls overhead, nearly her death. Or maybe it's the same heat that had flashed up in anger, irritation with herself, but directed outwardly (accidentally, unfortunately), at poor Gordon.

In bed, back in the present, with her heartrate slowing and her mind sharpening back into its usual clarity, Lady Penelope rubbed her eyes and groaned softly to herself. Oh, Gordon.

The nightmares are all trapped in the tomb, in the darkness and that choking heat, and they're all about him. Lady Penelope has never in her life had a nightmare about Gordon, or any of his brothers. Lady Penelope rarely has nightmares at all, which has made this week markedly unpleasant.

It's not that she can't take care of herself. Absolutely she can. She can't even imagine not being able to take care of herself. Perhaps that's why all her dreams have had awful things happening to Gordon, instead.

Gordon, choking and coughing and suffocating in a haze of toxic gas, crumpled at her feet while she breathes freely. Gordon, slumped over and pinned to the wall by a spear that should have impaled her. Gordon, drifting alone, limp and drowned in the mildewy, cold water of a dark, flooded tunnel, victim to some danger she'd failed to perceive. Gordon, falling away into abyssal blackness, his fingers slipping from hers, that way he'd looked at her in what they'd both thought were their last moments.

Gordon.

When Lady Penelope sinks back against her pillows, she's impulsively grabbed her compact from beside the bed, and the little yellow icon pulses softly as Gordon's communicator rings, thousands of miles away.

When he answers his first attempt at greeting her is swallowed by a yawn, and his voice is hazy, thick with sleep. "Mmmmmyeah. Gordon Island, Tracy speaking. Tracy Gordon. Island. Mm. Whatza 'mergency?"

"No emergency," Lady Penelope clarifies quickly. "Or rather, nothing urgent. Perhaps a small crisis of a personal nature. Gordon, I'm terribly sorry to have woken you, it's really far from serious."

Gordon rubs sleep from his eyes, blinks up at her. He's tiny and blue and incorporeal in her hands, and far away, in reality. But he's safe and whole, and just the sight of him already has her feeling much better. The way he looks up a moment later summons that familiar heat to her face again. "Are you okay, Lady P? Penelope. Uh, Lady Penelope. Your ladyship?

"Well, yes and no. You really must forgive me for the hour, I didn't expect to wake you."

"Later for you than it is for me. Uh, earlier, maybe. I always get your timezone wrong," Gordon points out. "What's up?"

It's nearly five in the morning, for her, and the entire call is feeling sillier by the minute. "I was just thinking about our excursion in South America. It occurred to me that I never did thank you, Gordon, for all your help. I hate to think of what might have happened if you hadn't come along."

"Oh? Oh! Well, I was only doing my job, Lady P. You're welcome, though."

If it hadn't been nearly five in the morning, if she hadn't been short on sleep and still a little shaken from the latest in a week of nightmares about him, perhaps she wouldn't have said it, but- "You really are tremendously brave. I think, sometimes, that to be as capable as I am-and I am very capable-I sometimes think that I must be so to the exclusion of others. If I were to do it again, I would wish to have been more gracious, in spite of how I was scared. The truth is I was beastly and impatient, and I should have apologized."

His eyes widen in sympathy and he grins a little crookedly. "Aw, Lady Penelope. No need. I thought you were awfully brave yourself, I think I probably would have gone to pieces if I'd seen you get rattled." It's his smile that makes her feel better, after everything. "So thank you."

Lady Penelope smiles back, huddling her knees up to her chest and hugging them, pretending it's not in absence of a certain stocky blonde boy, who she's never quite looked at this way before. "Perhaps you'll join me on the next trip like it. I'm sure I would be glad to have you along. Again. You were very... useful."

"Sounds like a date," Gordon answers, and his grin widens. His eyes flick downward, over some readout on the holocomm and, "Jeez, Lady P! It's not even dawn for you yet, weren't you sleeping? Go back to bed. I don't mean to cut the call short, but I've gotta get up and get on call properly. Not that it wasn't a nice way to wake up, but you should get back to sleep."

"Mmm. That would probably be wise, yes. But, Gordon?"

"Yeah?"

Her fingers rise to the tiny figure, and lightly trace the shape of his face, wondering if she'll see him safe in her dreams from now on. Or maybe she'll keep dreaming him in danger, because that's just what he does. For now though, there he is, with his doe-brown eyes and that smile. And in the half-light of near dawn, in the place in the world where she's always felt safest, perhaps that will be enough. "I suppose, most of all, I'm just very glad you're safe."


End file.
